hello

two

I'm back. Phew, I made it.

There is a lovely textile artist who has a blog called While She Naps. I paid little to no attention to this title for the longest time, except to vaguely wonder what she meant. Sometimes I'm very quick and sometimes I'm very slow. It wasn't until I was pregnant that I realised she was talking about her child. (In my, quite limited, defense there hasn't always been a picture of a sleeping child on her banner...) However, it wasn't until I had a baby myself that I realised the weight of those words. For me, it has been more than just being able to get on with things while he naps. Instead, nap time is met with a veritable clamouring of ideas in my head of ways I could fill this precious "free" time. Never have so few minutes been so rich with possibility. Of course, I don't always rise to the challenge and fill it wisely and productively. Sometimes I just sit, looking at the apples on the table, and think about nothing for a bit. However, most of the time I manage to get something Done that would otherwise have been impossible with tiny curious hands getting in the road or hanging off parts of my outfit.

A few nap times ago (before Halloween) I had a little bit of fun with some pie pumpkins. I completely and utterly plagiarised the idea from a little shop in St Mary's who had a whole display of them in their window, however, I do believe my own vintage buttons beat theirs hands down. Given that my creative outlets are few and far between these days, I was not surprised at how buoyant I felt once these were done.

A feeling that was similarly shared by one of the local squirrels, it seems.

One day I noticed a nibbling had begun and before we knew it, what had started out as a cute nod to the Jack O'Lantern, turned into a real life, macabre, someone-is-eating-my-head Halloween display. Trust me, the eyes didn't look anywhere near this harrowed when I first put them on.

I'm choosing to see it as an environmentally friendly kind of Halloween decoration that is being returned to the earth via a small furry marauder. I'll just reclaim the vintage buttons off the deck when they're done.

By the way, that rather fetching scarf on the first pumpkin is also a little crocheted nap time project. It is the first scarf I have ever made for myself. Which is shocking given that I've been in Canada this long. Somebody needs to give me a good talking to about more efficient use of nap times.